Fred Aiken Writing

my cat keeps following me around,

I think she’s planning something,

maybe reporting back to my wife

all the gross things I do when I think I’m alone,

or maybe she thinks I don’t have any friends

and feels like she needs to be my pity friend,

or maybe it’s because I seem to be able to tolerate the smell of her cat poops

so she figured I might be ok after all, I can still stay

in her house

I often take life advice from the neighbor kid

down the street because he seems to know a lot more about bitcorn than me

and I feel like that might be important,

so I put on my VR headset,

virtually stroll down a virtual street

to go to a virtual cafe

to enjoy a virtual coffee

before going to a virtual bank

to check on my virtual money

to ensure I have enough to go to a virtual whorehouse

where some twentysomething grad student trying to pay off student loans

for a degree she no longer wants

whispers into my headset while our avatars

awkwardly, though not as awkward if it was in the real world,

titillate one another, at least that’s the way I see it playing out,

but it’s never all that satisfying,

and I want my money back,

and I don’t want to be a part of the future,

I think it might be time to virtually quit,

or at least opt out of all those ads they keep shoving down my virtual throat,

as if I’m ever going to live in the real world again